It also comes just six weeks after six people were killed and 13, including the US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, were wounded during a shooting spree in a supermarket car park in Tucson, Arizona.

Texas for Gun-free Schools, a group campaigning against the measure, said that it was supported by only one in four Texans and just 15 per cent of students.

“Guns do not belong in classrooms, and the incredibly low violent crime rate on college campuses demonstrates the success of this policy,” the group said.

While the plan provoked anger among opponents, supporters said that allowing everyone to carry a hidden weapon was the only way to prevent more massacres.

“It’s strictly a matter of self-defence,” said Jeff Wentworth, a Republican state senator. “I don’t ever want to see repeated on a Texas college campus what happened at Virginia Tech.” “Some deranged, suicidal madman goes into a building and is able to pick off totally defenceless kids like sitting ducks.”

Before Virginia Tech, the University of Texas was the site of America’s worst college shooting, when a student killed 16 people and wounded dozens more in August 1966.

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a pro-gun group, said crime rates at universities in Colorado had dropped since the state allowed them to permit guns on campus.

“Current policies give such victims the option of playing dead or huddling under desks,” the group said.

Supporters also pointed out that academics and students would need to obtain a state “concealed carry” licence, which is available to people 21 or older who pass a training course and a background check.

However Colin Goddard, a senior official for the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, who as a student was shot four times in the Virginia Tech incident, disagreed.

“People tell me if they would have been there, they would have shot that guy,” said Mr Goddard. “That offends me. People want to be the hero, I understand that. They play video games and they think they understand the reality. It’s nothing like that.”